Speed matters: Managing innovation in the energy sector by building shared understanding in the face of multiple clockspeeds

Melanie Kreye; Eva Sass Lauritsen; Philip J. Cash

doi:10.1109/TEM.2023.3336235

Speed matters: Managing innovation in the energy sector by building shared understanding in the face of multiple clockspeeds

Melanie Kreye, Eva Sass Lauritsen, Philip J. Cash

Management

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Innovating for the green transition is increasingly important and energy producers and distributors play a central role, as they integrate rapidly emerging, new and more sustainable technologies into the much slower-changing energy system. However, there has been surprisingly little research on how differing temporal perspectives (or clockspeeds) impact innovation, particularly in traditionally slow sectors, such as the energy sector. This is linked to key questions in how to improve shared understanding in contexts with multiple clockspeeds. Thus, we—for the first time—examine how shared understanding of differing clockspeeds can be developed in innovation teams in the energy sector. We conducted a quasi-experiment using a timeline-based intervention with 38 practitioners. Our results show that teams with the timeline developed greater actual shared understanding, but did not necessarily perceive this improvement compared with teams using generic innovation support. Further, despite working with a timeline intervention, rather than traditional creativity tools, we found no negative impact on the creative performance of the teams. Therefore, we substantially add to the extant literature by highlighting the potentially important role of timelines in supporting the development of shared understanding in creative-innovation contexts with diverse clockspeeds, even though such interventions are not typical of creative-innovation tasks.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1629-1641
Journal	IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management
Volume	71
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/TEM.2023.3336235
Publication status	Published - 28 Nov 2023

Keywords

Clockspeed
shared understanding
creativity
energy
innovation

Access to Document

10.1109/TEM.2023.3336235

Cite this

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title = "Speed matters: Managing innovation in the energy sector by building shared understanding in the face of multiple clockspeeds",

abstract = "Innovating for the green transition is increasingly important and energy producers and distributors play a central role, as they integrate rapidly emerging, new and more sustainable technologies into the much slower-changing energy system. However, there has been surprisingly little research on how differing temporal perspectives (or clockspeeds) impact innovation, particularly in traditionally slow sectors, such as the energy sector. This is linked to key questions in how to improve shared understanding in contexts with multiple clockspeeds. Thus, we—for the first time—examine how shared understanding of differing clockspeeds can be developed in innovation teams in the energy sector. We conducted a quasi-experiment using a timeline-based intervention with 38 practitioners. Our results show that teams with the timeline developed greater actual shared understanding, but did not necessarily perceive this improvement compared with teams using generic innovation support. Further, despite working with a timeline intervention, rather than traditional creativity tools, we found no negative impact on the creative performance of the teams. Therefore, we substantially add to the extant literature by highlighting the potentially important role of timelines in supporting the development of shared understanding in creative-innovation contexts with diverse clockspeeds, even though such interventions are not typical of creative-innovation tasks.",

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